are going to meet a young man is no longer proof of
anything, except, indeed, that people will talk.
Cassandra saw, not without a pang of jealousy, that he
was extremely solicitous that people should not talk about
Katharine, as if his interest in her were still proprietary
rather than friendly. As they were both ignorant of Ralph’s
visit the night before they had not that reason to comfort
themselves with the thought that matters were hastening
to a crisis. These absences of Katharine’s, moreover,
left them exposed to interruptions which almost
destroyed their pleasure in being alone together. The rainy
evening made it impossible to go out; and, indeed, according
to William’s code, it was considerably more damning
to be seen out of doors than surprised within. They
were so much at the mercy of bells and doors that they
could hardly talk of Macaulay with any conviction, and
William preferred to defer the second act of his tragedy
until another day.
Under these circumstances Cassandra showed herself at
her best. She sympathized with William’s anxieties and
did her utmost to share them; but still, to be alone together,
to be running risks together, to be partners in the
wonderful conspiracy, was to her so enthralling that she
was always forgetting discretion, breaking out into ex
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clamations and admirations which finally made William
believe that, although deplorable and upsetting, the situation
was not without its sweetness.
When the door did open, he started, but braved the
forthcoming revelation. It was not Mrs. Milvain, however,
but Katharine herself who entered, closely followed
by Ralph Denham. With a set expression which showed
what an effort she was making, Katharine encountered
their eyes, and saying, “We’re not going to interrupt you,”
she led Denham behind the curtain which hung in front
of the room with the relics. This refuge was none of her
willing, but confronted with wet pavements and only some
belated museum or Tube station for shelter, she was forced,
for Ralph’s sake, to face the discomforts of her own house.
Under the street lamps she had thought him looking both
tired and strained.
Thus separated, the two couples remained occupied for
some time with their own affairs. Only the lowest murmurs
penetrated from one section of the room to the
other. At length the maid came in to bring a message
that Mr. Hilbery would not be home for dinner. It was
true that there was no need that Katharine should be
informed, but William began to inquire Cassandra’s opinion
in such a way as to show that, with or without reason,
he wished very much to speak to her.
From motives of her own Cassandra dissuaded him.
“But don’t you think it’s a little unsociable?” he
hazarded. “Why not do something amusing?—go to the
play, for instance? Why not ask Katharine and Ralph, eh?”
The coupling of their names in this manner caused
Cassandra’s heart to leap with pleasure.
“Don’t you think they must be—?” she began, but William
hastily took her up.
“Oh, I know nothing about that. I only thought we
might amuse ourselves, as your uncle’s out.”
He proceeded on his embassy with a mixture of excitement
and embarrassment which caused him to turn aside
with his hand on the curtain, and to examine intently for
several moments the portrait of a lady, optimistically said
by Mrs. Hilbery to be an early work of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Then, with some unnecessary fumbling, he drew aside
the curtain, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground,
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repeated his message and suggested that they should all
spend the evening at the play. Katharine accepted the
suggestion with such cordiality that it was strange to
find her of no clear mind as to the precise spectacle she
wished to see. She left the choice entirely to Ralph and
William, who, taking counsel fraternally over an evening
paper, found themselves in agreement as to the merits of
a music-hall. This being arranged, everything else followed
easily and enthusiastically. Cassandra had never
been to a music-hall. Katharine instructed her in the peculiar
delights of an entertainment where Polar bears follow
directly upon ladies in full evening dress, and the
stage is alternately a garden of mystery, a milliner’s bandbox,
and a fried-fish shop in the Mile End Road. Whatever
the exact nature of the program that night, it fulfilled
the highest purposes of dramatic art, so far, at least,
as four of the audience were concerned.
No doubt the actors and the authors would have been
surprised to learn in what shape their efforts reached
those particular eyes and ears; but they could not have
denied that the effect as a whole was tremendous. The
hall resounded with brass and strings, alternately of enormous
pomp and majesty, and then of sweetest lamentation.
The reds and creams of the background, the lyres
and harps and urns and skulls, the protuberances of plaster,
the fringes of scarlet plush, the sinking and blazing
of innumerable electric lights, could scarcely have been
surpassed for decorative effect by any craftsman of the
ancient or modern world.
Then there was the audience itself, bare-shouldered,
tufted and garlanded in the stalls, decorous but festal in
the balconies, and frankly fit for daylight and street life
in the galleries. But, however they differed when looked
at separately, they shared the same huge, lovable nature
in the bulk, which murmured and swayed and quivered all
the time the dancing and juggling and love-making went
on in front of it, slowly laughed and reluctantly left off
laughing, and applauded with a helter-skelter generosity
which sometimes became unanimous and overwhelming.
Once William saw Katharine leaning forward and clapping
her hands with an abandonment that startled him. Her
laugh rang out with the laughter of the audience.
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For a second he was puzzled, as if this laughter disclosed
something that he had never suspected in her.
But then Cassandra’s face caught his eye, gazing with
astonishment at the buffoon, not laughing, too deeply
intent and surprised to laugh at what she saw, and for
some moments he watched her as if she were a child.
The performance came to an end, the illusion dying out
first here and then there, as some rose to put on their
coats, others stood upright to salute “God Save the King,”
the musicians folded their music and encased their instruments,
and the lights sank one by one until the house was
empty, silent, and full of great shadows. Looking back over
her shoulder as she followed Ralph through the swing doors,
Cassandra marveled to see how the stage was already entirely
without romance. But, she wondered, did they really
cover all the seats in brown holland every night?
The success of this entertainment was such that before
they separated another expedition had been planned for
the next day. The next day was Saturday; therefore both
William and Ralph were free to devote the whole afternoon
to an expedition to Greenwich, which Cassandra
had never seen, and Katharine confused with Dulwich.
On this occasion Ralph was their guide. He brought them
without accident to Greenwich.
What exigencies of state or fantasies of imagination
first gave birth to the cluster of pleasant places by which
London is surrounded is matter of indifference now that
they have adapted themselves so admirably to the needs
of people between the ages of twenty and thirty with
Saturday afternoons to spend. Indeed, if ghosts have any
interest in the affections of those who succeed them they
must reap their richest harvests when the fine weather
comes again and the lovers, the sightseers, and the holiday-
makers pour themselves out of trains and omnibuses
into their old pleasure-grounds. It is true that they go,
for the most part, unthanked by name, although upon
this occasion William was ready to give such discriminating
praise as the dead architects and painters received
seldom in the course of the year. They were walking by
the river bank, and Katharine and Ralph, lagging a little
behind, caught fragments of his lecture. Katharine smiled
at the sound of his voice; she listened as if she found it
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a little unfamiliar, intimately though she knew it; she
tested it. The note of assurance and happiness was new.
William was very happy. She learnt every hour what sources
of his happiness she had neglected. She had never asked
him to teach her anything; she had never consented to
read Macaulay; she had never expressed her belief that
his play was second only to the works of Shakespeare.
She followed dreamily in their wake, smiling and delighting
in the sound which conveyed, she knew, the rapturous
and yet not servile assent of Cassandra.
Then she murmured, “How can Cassandra—” but changed
her sentence to the opposite of what she meant to say
and ended, “how could she herself have been so blind?”
But it was unnecessary to follow out such riddles when
the presence of Ralph supplied her with more interesting
problems, which somehow became involved with the little
boat crossing the river, the majestic and careworn City,
and the steamers homecoming with their treasury, or starting
in search of it, so that infinite leisure would be necessary
for the proper disentanglement of one from the
other. He stopped, moreover, and began inquiring of an
old boatman as to the tides and the ships. In thus talking
he seemed different, and even looked different, she
thought, against the river, with the steeples and towers
for background. His strangeness, his romance, his power
to leave her side and take part in the affairs of men, the
possibility that they should together hire a boat and cross
the river, the speed and wildness of this enterprise filled
her mind and inspired her with such rapture, half of love
and half of adventure, that William and Cassandra were
startled from their talk, and Cassandra exclaimed, “She
looks as if she were offering up a sacrifice! Very beautiful,”
she added quickly, though she repressed, in deference
to William, her own wonder that the sight of Ralph
Denham talking to a boatman on the banks of the Thames
could move any one to such an attitude of adoration.
That afternoon, what with tea and the curiosities of
the Thames tunnel and the unfamiliarity of the streets,
passed so quickly that the only method of prolonging it
was to plan another expedition for the following day.
Hampton Court was decided upon, in preference to
Hampstead, for though Cassandra had dreamt as a child
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of the brigands of Hampstead, she had now transferred
her affections completely and for ever to William III.
Accordingly, they arrived at Hampton Court about lunchtime
on a fine Sunday morning. Such unity marked their
expressions of admiration for the red-brick building that
they might have come there for no other purpose than to
assure each other that this palace was the stateliest palace
in the world. They walked up and down the Terrace,
four abreast, and fancied themselves the owners of the
place, and calculated the amount of good to the world
produced indubitably by such a tenancy.
“The only hope for us,” said Katharine, “is that William
shall die, and Cassandra shall be given rooms as the widow
of a distinguished poet.”
“Or—” Cassandra began, but checked herself from the liberty
of envisaging Katharine as the widow of a distinguished
lawyer. Upon this, the third day of junketing, it was tiresome
to have to restrain oneself even from such innocent
excursions of fancy. She dared not question William; he was
inscrutable; he never seemed even to follow the other couple
with curiosity when they separated, as they frequently did,
to name a plant, or examine a fresco. Cassandra was constantly
studying their backs. She noticed how sometimes
the impulse to move came from Katharine, and sometimes
from Ralph; how, sometimes, they walked slow, as if in profound
intercourse, and sometimes fast, as if in passionate.
When they came together again nothing could be more unconcerned
than their manner.
“We have been wondering whether they ever catch a
fish …” or, “We must leave time to visit the Maze.” Then,
to puzzle her further, William and Ralph filled in all interstices
of meal-times or railway journeys with perfectly
good-tempered arguments; or they discussed politics, or
they told stories, or they did sums together upon the
backs of old envelopes to prove something. She suspected
that Katharine was absent-minded, but it was impossible
to tell. There were moments when she felt so young and
inexperienced that she almost wished herself back with
the silkworms at Stogdon House, and not embarked upon
this bewildering intrigue.
These moments, however, were only the necessary
shadow or chill which proved the substance of her bliss,
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and did not damage the radiance which seemed to rest
equally upon the whole party. The fresh air of spring, the
sky washed of clouds and already shedding warmth from
its blue, seemed the reply vouchsafed by nature to the
mood of her chosen spirits. These chosen spirits were to
be found also among the deer, dumbly basking, and among
the fish, set still in mid-stream, for they were mute sharers
in a benignant state not needing any exposition by the
tongue. No words that Cassandra could come by expressed
the stillness, the brightness, the air of expectancy which
lay upon the orderly beauty of the grass walks and gravel
paths down which they went walking four abreast that
Sunday afternoon. Silently the shadows of the trees lay
